All eyes on Saskatchewan for rodeo event

Aboriginal rodeo participants will once again have an opportunity to challenge for various national titles in Canada. The Canadian Indian Rodeo (CIR) national finals are scheduled for Oct. 10 to 12 at Prairieland Park in Saskatoon.

“This is something that is about 20 years overdue,” said CIR president Beatle Soop.

But this won’t be the first time a Canadian rodeo championship for Aboriginal competitors has been staged.

Soop, a Regina resident, was one of the organizers of a national final that was held in 1991 in Lethbridge, Alta. But he doesn’t have fond memories of that event.

“A blizzard hit and nobody showed up for the first two days,” Soop said. “A lot of money was lost then. We didn’t have enough sponsors and we relied on gate admissions, which is wrong. I was one of the people who lost his shirt.”

Soop said it will cost about $190,000 to stage this year’s national event. Organizers are hoping to secure enough sponsors to make the event a success.

“Right now we’re working on that,” Soop said. “And we’re still looking for a title sponsorship. We’re looking for that title sponsorship and then we think that other sponsors will come in after that.”

A total of 14 events will be staged at the national finals. This includes the eight disciplines that are considered the major events at rodeos. They are bareback riding, saddle bronc riding, bull riding, steer wrestling, calf roping, team roping, ladies’ barrel racing and ladies’ breakaway roping.

There will also be four events for junior competitors. There will be varying age groupings for these events but they will primarily feature participants aged 16 and under.

The youth events will be junior steer riding, junior bull riding, junior girls’ barrel racing and breakaway roping.

And there will also be two events—team roping and breakaway roping—for senior competitors, who are 50 and over.

At the national finals, all of the events are expected to feature a dozen participants. In order to qualify for the Canadian championships, competitors must fare well in either a new CIR tour being created across western Canada or in events on the established North American Indian Rodeo Association.

Six events are planned for this year’s Canadian tour. The plan is to stage two events in northern Alberta, two others in southern Alberta and two in Saskatchewan.

As of mid-April, however, only three events had been confirmed and announced.

The first one was the Swan River First Nation Rodeo, a two-day event, June 30 and July 1, which will be held in Kinuso, Alta.
Saskatchewan’s Peepeekisis First Nation is also scheduled to host an event from July 26 to July 28. And then the Queen City Rodeo is set for Aug. 2 to 4 in Regina.

“We’re looking at three or four other sites right now,” Soop said. “We’re hoping in the next two to three weeks to confirm where they’ll be.”

Cherie Davies, a barrel racing competitor for Sundre, Alta., is thrilled Aboriginal rodeo participants in the country now have their own national championships. In previous years they would aim to take part in a prestigious Native rodeo in Las Vegas.

“It’s a huge expense to get down there,” Davies said of the American event. “It’s definitely nice to have something here in Canada. And it also gives the young ones something to strive for here.”

Soop is one of nine individuals on the CIR board. He’s confident he can spearhead the organization into having a successful national championship, unlike the one he was a part of in 1991.
“I was 22 years old back then,” he said. “I’m a lot more educated now. I know now rodeos don’t make money from their gate admissions. No rodeo can do that.”

This year’s national finals will be staged during the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend. Soop is confident the event will be well attended. Capacity at Prairieland Park is 2,000 people.

“We’re going to fill that place up this year,” he said. “It will be a sellout.”

Soop believes even more tickets would be sold if they were available.

“The idea is if we sell out this year and we had a lot of people that wanted to get in, we may move it to where the (Saskatoon) Blades play hockey,” he said.

The Blades, members of the Western Hockey League, play their home games at Credit Union Centre, a facility with more than 11,000 seats.

Organizers are hoping to make the CIR national final an annual event. For the first few years at least, the plan is to keep the championships in the same city.

“For now we’d like to keep it in Saskatoon and grow it there,” Soop said.